Chapter - 8

Resource Allocation

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 ‘Step Wise’ – Project Planning
0.Select
1. Identify project 2. Identify project
project objectives infrastructure

3. Analyse
project
characteristics
Review
4. Identify products
and activities

5. Estimate effort
Lower for activity
For each
level
6. Identify activity activity
detail
risks
10. Lower level
7. Allocate
planning
resources

8. Review/ publicize
9. Execute plan plan
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7.1 Identify and allocate resources to activities
– Type of staff needed

– Numbers

– Staff availability

7.2 Revise plans and estimates to take into account resource

constraints
– Some staff may be needed for more than one task at same time so
priority should be given to the critical activity

– e.g. staff not being available until a later date

– Non-project activities

– O/P of this step is Gantt chart

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 8.1 Introduction

What is Resource Allocation

• After the activities have been identified using

various techniques and tabulated into a Work-Break-
Down the resources need to be allocated to
complete the identified tasks. This process is
considered resource allocation.
 Result of Resource Allocation
• Reflected in many schedules,
– Activity Schedule.

– Resource Schedule.

– Cost Schedule.

• Changes to these schedules are very much

interrelated and require domain experience to
“get it right”. 5
• Activity schedule - indicating start and completion
dates for each activity

• Resource schedule - indicating dates when resources

needed + level of resources

• Cost schedule showing accumulative expenditure

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 8.2 Nature of resources
• Labour : Even the project manager

• Equipment : Coffee Machine?

• Materials : Consumed items – floppy disks

• Space : Rooms, Cubicles

• Services : Telecomm, Cleaning services

• Time

• Money : Secondary resource

Note: These are broad categories only.
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 8.3 Identifying resource requirements
• For each activity identify,
– Work amount required (in work units)

– Basic skill or experience level required (to even undertake the

task)

– Complexity of the task (this will help to determine the

experience required)

– Task Category (Unskilled, skilled, leadership, expert,

management)
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• Example.

– Activity – Install Network Hardware for 20

computers.

– Work units - 20.

– Basic Skill – Bachelors Degree in related field.

– Task Complexity: 5.
– Task Category: Skilled (other categories may be
Management, Leadership, Expert)
 8.4 Resource Scheduling

• After all the required resources have been identified,

they need to be scheduled effectively.

• The earliest start dates, last start dates will need to

be taken into account to schedule resources
efficiently.

• Resources should be balanced throughout the

project.
• Human resource scheduling issues,
– Planned Leave, Public Holidays.

– Possible sick leave (random, subjective at best and hard to

predict).

– General motivation and enthusiasm for the task allocated

(If they dislike the task, it will flow through into the
output).

– Work load and stress in project.

– Stress outside work.

 Methods used in allocating and
scheduling resources

• Precedence graph

• Activity bar chart

• Resource histograms

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Activity bar chart

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Resource histograms

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 Resource smoothing
• It is usually difficult to get specialist staff who will work odd days
to fill in gaps – need for staff to learn about application etc

• Staff often have to be employed for a continuous block of time

• Therefore desirable to employ a constant number of staff on a

project – who as far as possible are fully employed

• Hence need for resource smoothing

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Before And after smoothing
 Resource clashes
• Where same resource needed in more than one place at the
same time

• can be resolved by:

– delaying one of the activities
• taking advantage of float to change start date

• delaying start of one activity until finish of the other activity that
resource is being used on - puts back project completion

– moving resource from a non-critical activity

– bringing in additional resource - increases costs

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 Prioritizing activities

There are two main ways of doing this:

• Total float priority – those with the smallest

float have the highest priority

• Ordered list priority – this considers a set of

simple criteria.

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 Total Float Priority

• Ordered according to their total float.

• Smallest total float has highest priority.

• Activities are allocated resources in ascending

order of total float.

• Changes to plan will require re-calculation.

 Ordered List Priority
• Activities that can proceed at the same time are ordered
according to a set of simple criteria.

• Burman’s priority list takes into account activity duration as

well as total float:
1. Shortest critical activity.

2. Critical activities.

3. Shortest non-critical activity.

4. Non-critical activity with least float.

5. Non-critical activities.

Note: Other ways of ordering are also possible.

 8.5 Critical path
• Scheduling resources can create new dependencies
between activities – recall critical chains
• It is best not to add dependencies to the activity
network to reflect resource constraints
– Makes network very messy
– A resource constraint may disappear during the project, but
link remains on network

• Amend dates on schedule to reflect resource constraints

 8.7 Being Specific:
Allocating individuals to activities
The initial ‘resource types’ for a task have to be replaced
by actual individuals.
Factors to be considered:

• Availability

• Criticality

• Risk

• Training

• Team building – and motivation

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Availability – who is free? Note that this will change during the course of the
project as some tasks are completed earlier or later than planned
Criticality – You would want to put your more experienced, ‘safer’, staff on
the critical activities
Risk – this is similar to the point above, but some activities could be off the
critical path but still have risks e.g. to the quality of subsequent products
Training – despite concerns about minimizing risk, it is healthy to take some
risks in order to develop staff capabilities by allocating challenging tasks to
relatively inexperienced stafff.
Team-building – identifying people who work well together can pay
dividends; chopping and changing plans all the time may in theory optimize
project performance, but can in practice be demotivating for staff.

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8.8 Publishing the resource schedule

SPM (5e) resource allocation© The

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McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009
 8.9 Cost schedules

Cost schedules can now be produced:

Costs include:
• Staff costs

• Overheads

• Usage charges
Staff costs – includes not just salary, but also social security
contributions by the employer, holiday pay etc. Timesheets are often used
to record actual hours spent on each project by an individual. One issue
can be how time when a staff member is allocated and available to the
project, but is not actually working on the project, is dealt with.
Overheads - e.g. space rental, service charges etc. Some overheads
might be directly attributable to the project; in other cases a percentage of
departmental overheads may be allocated to project costs.
Usage charges – some charges can be on a ‘pay as you go’ basis e.g.
telephone charges, postage, car mileage – at the planning stage an
estimate of these may have to be made

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8.10 The Scheduling Sequence

Weekly Project Cost

Cumulative project cost
Balancing Project cost
Cost profile:

This shows how much is going to be

spent in each week. This could be important
where an organization allocates project budgets by
financial year or quarter and the project straddles
more than one of these financial periods
Cost profile
Accumulative costs:
The project manager will also be concerned
about planned accumulative costs. This chart can
be compared to the actual accumulative costs
when controlling the project to assess whether the
project is likely to meet its cost targets.
Accumulative costs

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Balancing concerns:

• Successful project scheduling is not a simple sequence.

• Because of the inter-linking of different concerns project

planning will need to be iterative. The consequences of

decisions will need to carefully assessed and plans

adjusted accordingly.
Balancing concerns

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Example to solve Histogram
Id. Duration Precedents Resource

A 2 4
B 2 A 4
C 2 A 6
D 2 B 3
E 4 C 1
F 1 C,E 2

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Example to solve Histogram

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Example to solve Histogram

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Example to solve Histogram

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